KCTS-TV will merge with Crosscut

KCTS-TV, Seattle’s public TV station, is merging with Crosscut, an 8-year-old website that billed itself as “News of the Great Nearby,” into a new entity formally named Cascade Public Media.

What’s being created was officially described Wednesday as a “larger multi-platform organization.” Crosscut will continue to operate, but with financial underpinnings it has lacked. Its news resources will be made available to KCTS: The public TV station laid off its production staff last April in what became known as the “Thursday morning massacre.”

“KCTS has got to get back into the news business,” said David Brewster, who founded Crosscut but is no longer involved with the news site.

Or, in words of Crosscut editor-in-chief Greg Hanscomb, “They get eight years of entrepreneurship and really solid journalism.”

The merger has been in discussion for months, with each party blowing hot and cold. Its particulars:

The board of directors of Crosscut have voted to dissolve the organization as a stand-alone 501(c)(3) and merge with KCTS-TV. KCTS has filed to legally change its name to Cascade Public Media;

The board of directors of the combined organization will oversee KCTS, Crosscut and What’s Good 206, an online magazine just acquired by KCTS and self-described as “locally inspired digital media for and by millennials.” KCTS CEO Rob Dunlop will be in charge of the combined operation. “The way I understand it, KCTS is the boss,” Brewster said.

Donors will be able to specify that their money go to KCTS, or Crosscut, or be put into the combined operation.

“We have been given every assurance, verbally and in writing, that Crosscut will maintain its editorial independence,” Hanscomb said. “It’s going to catapult us two to three years from where we are now from a business standpoint.”

Brewster, founder of both Crosscut and the Seattle Weekly, described the combining of KCTS and Crosscut as “an experiment certainly worth trying. They’ve worked out editorial independence and all of that is part of the deal. I hope the need to do good journalism will cause them to do right by this..”

“Crosscut will look the same, be a website and with the same people in charge,” Brewster added.

Crosscut was launched in 2007 as a for-profit enterprise: Brewster was able to secure financial backing from Tom Alberg of the Madrona Venture Group and others. Less than two years later, however, Crosscut became a non-profit. It has turned to foundation money, for instance winning an $500,000 grant over three years from the Gates Foundation. Crosscut was also supported by the Knight Foundation, with Knight’s grant matched by the Seattle Foundation.

Brewster was succeeded as publisher in 2012 by Greg Shaw, who came out of the Gates Foundation. But Shaw left after 18 months to become Microsoft’s senior director for advertising and strategy.

In the past eight years, Crosscut has morphed from its original regional emphasis into a news site focused on local and state government.

It runs quality pieces on statewide issues, such Daniel Jack Chasan’s recent discussion of the Yakima Basin Enhancement Plan, designed to store more water for both salmon recovery and irrigation. Of its political reporting, however, Crosscut is notorious for thick legislative analysis and last year’s (literally) endless, slumber-inducing articles on the state Senate race in Washington’s 35th District.

Hanscom came over to Crosscut in August from Grist, a Seattle-based environmental news site that is thorough but frequently self-absorbed and snarky. He voiced great enthusiasm Wednesday for restoring a Northwest-wide focus to Crosscut. “My mission is to restore regional,” he said, talking about creating a position such as state editor with freedom to roam.

“We’ll provide a platform for more journalists with a greater variety of voices and opinions and with broader coverage of the Seattle metro region, state government and Washington state.”

Ex-Stranger news editor, Publicola co-founder and blogger Erica Barnett posed some questions about the merger on her Facebook page:

“Will this result in more local coverage or less? Will it improve Crosscut’s frankly abysmal record of diversity in their reporting staff? Will the merger prompt Crosscut to hire a single reporter or editor who is not a straight white man?”